Syracuse is included in the list of those affected by the Circuit City meltdown-to-shutdown

Steve Helber / APHome Depot recruiter Brenda Peregoy, of Atlanta, talks with Circuit City IT employee Steve McClain, left, during a job fair Tuesday sponsored by Circuit City to help its displaced employees at the company's headquarters in Richmond, Va. Circuit City will finally flicker out when its last 567 stores close this year, but the bankruptcy of the nation's second-largest electronics retailer will ripple across the U.S. economy for years.

Syracuse, NY -- This is a shortened version of a terrific AP story on how a retailer meltdown has far-reaching impact. That's what we're seeing, too, with the New Process Gear saga.

Circuit City Ripples Go Beyond Vacancies, Layoffs

Richmond, Va. -- Circuit City will finally flicker out when its last 567 stores close this year, but the bankruptcy of the nation's second-largest electronics retailer will ripple across the U.S. economy for years.

In its wake will be 18.71 million square feet of vacant space in a faltering real estate market. More than 40,000 workers will be jobless, including 7,000 laid off last year.

Shopping centers will lose rental income. Suppliers will lose display space. Newspapers already struggling with falling ad revenues will have one less glossy insert in their Sunday editions.

Circuit City is bigger by far than any other retailer that has gone under in the current recession. The job outlook for its workers is far worse. The prospects for suppliers finding other customers is grim, and a larger pool of creditors are likely to go unpaid.

"The situation today is so different than" during other downturns, said Jerry Mozian, a restructuring expert at Tatum LLC. "It wasn't the whole economy. Here, we've got a worldwide recession."

Other big retail bankruptcies, like Macy's in 1992 and Kmart's in 2002, ended in reorganizations or buyouts rather than liquidation.

One thing not touched on in this snippet from the story is the ripple effect on shoppers.

Take Circuit City.

When it was alive and breathing, its presence in Carousel Center mall, for example, gave shoppers there a nice option. They could price-check between Circuit and the Best Buy, above. They could have played one off of the other. They could have taken those price checks into the community to see how other retailers -- the indepenents -- matched price points.

With competition gone, or diminished, there's little to hold price points down (well, the Internet, but that means waiting when sometimes you just want the LCD TV monitor RIGHT NOW).

That, too, is not good for the economy because it's not good for the economic storm-tossed shopper.

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